'A long way to go'

Sunday

Nov 25, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Each week on the San Joaquin River, a chemist doubles as a boat captain. David Callas, who works for the city of Stockton, has tested the river's water quality so many times since 1989 that by now, a day on the Delta is just another day at work.

Alex Breitler

Each week on the San Joaquin River, a chemist doubles as a boat captain. David Callas, who works for the city of Stockton, has tested the river's water quality so many times since 1989 that by now, a day on the Delta is just another day at work.

"There are tougher jobs out there," he said one recent morning as the boat plied its way upstream for routine tests required by law. "Especially when it's a beautiful day like this."

A sea lion splashed alongside the boat, as if giving chase. Egrets took flight from the levees, startled by the motor.

The scenery, however, does not tell the whole story.

Forty years after the Clean Water Act became law, this river and virtually every stream in San Joaquin County is legally considered polluted.

The act boldly aimed to eliminate the discharge of pollution into rivers and streams by 1985. Decades later, the list of "impaired" waterways has grown longer - not shorter. According to one estimate, at the current rate it would take 500 years to clean up waters across the country.

This does not mean the law has failed, experts say.

The list has grown longer not because the water is getting worse, but because we have discovered previously unknown problems, regulators say.

For context, the Clean Water Act was passed at a time when cities were simply dumping their sewage into the nearest convenient waterway.

San Francisco Bay stank. Corrosive gas from the raw sewage peeled the paint off the buildings. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio burst into flames.

These most glaring problems have been corrected.

And yet, the promise of the law remains unfulfilled. Agriculture, a major source of Valley pollution, is exempt from the Clean Water Act. Regulatory agencies in lean budget times struggle to adequately enforce it.

And scientists are only now learning about thousands of chemicals that are not regulated under the law, and slip past our treatment plants into the Delta each day.

Prescription medications that pass through our bodies. Personal care products we use in the sink or shower. Even something like caffeine.

It's not clear how these affect the environment - including, ultimately, the humans that swim, fish and drink these waters.

"You can't create new water, but you definitely can destroy it," said Tina Swanson, a scientist with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. "The Clean Water Act was our first step toward recognizing that, but the fact that we still have all of these water bodies that are polluted means we have a long way to go."

Part of the problem is simple geography. San Joaquin County is at the ground floor of the Central Valley. We deal not only with our own mess, but also with the messes created by upstream cities and farms.

Add to that the fact that a Lake Shasta-size volume of water is exported from the Delta each year, and you're left with stagnant conditions that allow nasty things to accumulate in backwaters and sloughs - pesticides that wash off farmers' fields or our own front yards, bacteria from pet and even human feces, heavy metals such as mercury that have persisted in our waterways since the Gold Rush.

Big facilities such as sewage treatment plants are easy targets.

"But you can't put all the blame on us," said Mel Lytle, director of Stockton's Municipal Utilities Department.

The city has done well on things within its control, regulators say. Stockton spent $42 million to reduce ammonia discharges at its treatment plant. Ammonia sucks the oxygen out of water, killing fish.

Stockton hasn't violated ammonia limits since early 2011, records show. It was fined $63,000 for that incident.

Conditions for fish in the Stockton Deep Water Channel have improved.

"The upgrade at the Stockton plant made a huge difference," Ken Landau, assistant executive officer with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, the agency charged with implementing and enforcing the Clean Water Act.

Stockton did not exactly embrace the prospect of upgrading its plant. It fought a new permit issued by the board and ultimately filed suit to try to block it.

Therein lies another problem: the Clean Water Act provides funding for cities to make expensive upgrades, but with an estimated $298 billion in improvements still needed across the country, demand is high for federal assistance, and it's tougher for local agencies to stomach the big investment.

It's one thing to clean up toilet waste. Water splashing off Stockton streets and into our gutters is also polluted - and that water goes directly to the Delta via 400 miles of storm lines and 158 separate discharge pipes.

A coalition of south Valley farmers sued the city in 2009, arguing Stockton's stormwater pollution harms the Delta and, in turn, their water supply.

In a document filed with the state earlier this year, the city reports overall improvement in the quality of that runoff - though hot spots remain, such as Smith Canal, where fecal bacteria tend to accumulate after storms. The canal drains an urban area of about 5 square miles.

Strategies to clean up stormwater are less stringent than wastewater. Streets are swept clear of debris, storm drains are stenciled, programs are established to properly collect hazardous waste.

But as treatment plants clean up their act, state regulators say they'll be looking at stormwater "a little more carefully" in the future. That could mean tougher requirements and higher bills for ratepayers.

"We want to make this a real program and really start addressing those problems," said Pamela Creedon, the water board's executive officer.

One of the messiest scenarios, all too familiar around Thanksgiving, is when oils and fats clog sewer lines and waste spills out onto city streets and into storm drains. It has happened thousands of times in Stockton. Almost 150,000 gallons of waste - enough to fill eight swimming pools - has seeped into our rivers and streams over the past five years.

Stockton was sued over that issue, too, this time by environmentalists. The result of that litigation was a new program to boost inspections and reduce the number of spills, and it appears to be helping.

As of September, 77 sewer overflows had occurred this year. That's compared with 182 overflows in all of 2011 and 167 the year before that.

Agriculture escaped the clutches of the Clean Water Act. Yet pesticides applied to farmers' fields remain a significant part of the problem, experts say.

A controversial state program requires coalitions of farmers to monitor water quality downstream from their lands and to encourage neighbors to reduce toxic runoff.

Still, farmers are not required to get permits like treatment plants or factories.

Eight years after the program started, officials say water quality is starting to improve in Duck Creek, an agricultural drainage southeast of Stockton.

"Yeah, I'd say it's been successful," said Mike Wackman, spokesman for a farmers' coalition in San Joaquin County. "Growers are responding to us."

About 85 percent of the local growers are members of the coalition, he said, adding it's hard to say why the other 15 percent have not participated.

Landau, with the water board, said there has been "definite improvement," though officials don't have enough data yet to put a number on it.